Friday, 20 January 2012

Blimey! Another reply from Mr Mark Hopwood!

Mark's excited about Panorama on Monday too!(The shame of it is that I'm off work all next week - so there won't be any further letters between us until at least Monday 30th. How will we both cope?)

Dear Dom

Thank you for your email. Our 08:06 was delayed by a points failure on it's 'up' journey, so was late turning around and departing again. The next train, the 08:21, was the one you caught and I can imagine how difficult this journey must have been, especially as it's formed with less carriages.

Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time

"War and Peace on the Oxford to London line"

Dramatis personae

Mark Hopwood - Managing Director of First Great Western trains

Sue Evans - Director of Communications for First Great Western trains

Dominic - that's me. I'm unhappy with Mark and Sue.

About me

My name is Dominic. For two years I commuted between Oxford and London on First Great Western trains. In late June 2011, after 14 months of paying around £450 a month for utterly appalling service, I decided to speak up.

Every time my train was delayed, I wrote to the Managing Director and Director of Communications for FGW trains - and the length of my email reflected the length of that day's delay... the idea being that I would waste the same amount of their time as they had wasted mine.

I kept it up for nine months - during which time I wrote around 100,000 words in 97 letters, reflecting over 24 hours of delays to my commute.

What follows are those letters - and their replies. Nothing is edited.

(Also: thanks to all who have contacted me to say how much they've sympathised, empathised or enjoyed these letters. It means a lot, honestly.)